Kern Valley Sun letter to editor attacks disabled patron on her financial concerns: McGlew and "Debbie" find the mistake

Poor, victimized, Chet Beedle...the problem, not the solver

I recieved a phone call from "Debbie" who has been attending meetings and had a question as to why the financial summary did not match up. In May of 2010, Debbie asked for an answer to the question of why there was a 70K discrepancy.
The administrators laughed as she told them she had found this particular "discrepancy" in the latest financials.
She came to another meeting, same question, but she also asked about "grant monies" which the hospital did not want to address either. As some have seen, CFO, Chet Beedle missed ALL the grant money which came from the ARRA funds or also known as "Obama money." Billions were available two years ago for hospitals, especially rural types.

A certain community member who tried everything to be now known as the famous line from Chet Beedle, that he doesn't answer questions from anyone who does not pose them in a "positive form."

This person did, but he's gone, and I'm still here.

As we all know, anyone who has worked with the public, you will rarely find people with serious concerns in a "positive frame of mind."

But if you're good at it, you can respectfully address the issue in question, try to resolve the problem: however for a higher than normal paid adminstrator such as Beedle, he could not in his own words, handle one phone call.

He hung up on her after five months of asking.

But...Debbie persisted, and at the Dec. 2010 meeting, McGlew told Beedle they had found some mistake in the numbers, he couldn't remember, asked Beedle and the CFO told his supervisor over the financial manager, "absolutely not."

Absolutely YES.

Again, Tim rapidly handled the situation at least in terms of this matter. And he and Debbie with no hanging up or harsh manner managed to find the misplacement of the numbers.

It was that simple.

When I heard this I asked her to write it out and then I would make it a post. So, for those whose only "contribution" is to sit and clap or agree with everything board says: this is what happens when you "problem solve" without a dramatic "victim" speech, known as "Poor Chet" from this day on.

They not only found it, but also together with this "member of the pubyick" they found a way to resolve it in the future for clarity.

Congratulations to both Tim McGlew and Debbie.

From: Debbie

Last May, 2010, I went to my first finance committee meeting in the trailer at the Kern Valley Hospital. I was handed a short summary of what was to be covered and a summary of the finance reports. As I was listening to the different speakers I notice that the summary of the cash flow report seemed to be out of whack. The numbers did not equal what they said they did. When I went to a subsequent board meeting I brought up the seeming error and did not realize that I made an error in speech and left the thousand off the 72 I mentioned as the error. As a result I was ignored. 


I emailed Dr.Gross and informed him of what I found and asked for explanation, and again no response. 


I went to the hospital and asked to talk to someone and was brought out Rhonda who said she wasn’t an accountant and could not explain it. I melted down. And ended up crying and yelling as Rhonda just looked at me with a blank expression which is what I was crying and yelling about. It’s like she couldn't be bothered to even try to understand. 


I am sorry for my emotional problems. I try to keep them to my self ,but….. It’s when I get no intelligent response to very direct questions, well it just hurts my feelings. I wrote an open letter on this blog begging for an explanation. So I waited a while and I still had not received a response to my inquiry about the cash flow report numbers. 


I decided to leave a message for Mr. Beedle to please call me. The operator transferred me to what I thought would be voice mail, but Chet answered himself! 


I said Wow I didn’t expect to get to talk to you but great. My name is Debbi Peugh and I would like to talk to you about the apparent shortages in the monthly cash flow reports. “There’s nothing wrong with the cash flow reports” “Excuse me but there are if you would just let m-”

“I don’t have to explain anything to you, I’m not going to have this conversation” click!

I cried. But I went to the next meeting held just last night, December 1 2010, and publicly got on them all about their arrogance. Also about the way I was treated by Chet.


Tim McGlew finally took my phone number and promised to call me and figure out what I was talking about.


He Did! It’s like WOW! I finally got to point out what I was talking about. 


And even better than that Tim saw I was right! But Chet was right too in that there was really no shortage except on that page.(pg4) He was not including the money put aside for the bond payment each month in the total payments number in the summary but yet his ending number in the summary included that payment into the bond account. That created the apparent shortage.

I hope that We can now rectify this error. Thank You Tim McGlew for taking the time to work with me to identify the issue so it could be addressed. I hope to see proper equations even in summary from now on. Please? 


Thanks again. Debbi Peugh